Dariel was originally found by missionaries on Facebook. She was looking for a church to go to but was struggling to find a church she enjoyed. 

Elder Safsten and Elder Beer were the first missionaries to talk with Dariel and they invited her to church. She stayed in contact off and on with the missionaries for a couple weeks and eventually came to sacrament meeting. After coming to church, Elder Farr and Elder Beer started to teach her more regularly again and help her learn more about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. 

As time continued, Elder Farr and Elder Youngberg continued to meet with Dariel and teach her about the doctrine of baptism. She loved learning from the missionaries and seemed to be progressing well. However, she had one concern. She had previously been baptized before and didn’t understand the need to be baptized again. As the missionaries tried to teach her the need for proper authority and how God has restored that authority again on the earth through a modern prophet, she seemed to drift and the communication between her and missionaries became less frequent. 

After about three to four weeks of little communication Dariel came to church one Sunday and she asked to set up a lesson with the missionaries the following Tuesday.

Dariel’s work schedule is very busy so she can only come to church every other week. She works long hours, so the missionaries would often need to teach her over the phone during her lunch break. When Elder Fritze and Elder Youngbert called her up and talked with her, she seemed more focused and purpose driven.

Dariel shared that she had gone to a different church with her friend, but that she didn’t enjoy it and didn’t feel as peaceful at church as she had with the missionaries. That’s when she told the missionaries she wanted to be baptized and become a member of the church. 

Elder Fritze and Elder Youngberg were very surprised to hear this because of Dariel’s concern about needing to be baptized again. But as the missionaries talked with her, they knew that she had been feeling the spirit every time she came to church with them, and the members of the church had really reached out to her in love and fellowship. 

Dariel was baptized on July 27, 2025 in the Asheville Ward as a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is filled with joy and light and says her greatest desire is to serve God for the rest of her life.

#TKMTenderMercies

Elder Porter and Elder Barnett received a referral on a Saturday night, so they called Jerry immediately and invited him to church. The next morning, Jerry came to church for the first time. After church, the elders taught Jerry about the doctrine of baptism and confirmation and invited him to be baptized, and Jerry accepted.

Over the following weeks, Jerry met with the missionaries regularly and had contact with them daily. He had a smoking addiction for over 30 years and he said he needed help being able to quit smoking. The missionaries promised him that if he read the Book of Mormon daily and continued to come to church then he would be able to stop smoking.

My dear brothers and sisters, I promise that as you prayerfully study the Book of Mormon every day, you will make better decisions—every day. I promise that as you ponder what you study, the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life. I promise that as you daily immerse yourself in the Book of Mormon, you can be immunized against the evils of the day. – President Russell M. Nelson

From that point on, Jerry read the Book of Mormon every day and came to church every Sunday. With the help of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, he quit smoking.

At the first lesson the elders had at Jerry’s house, Jerry told the missionaries he was confused because he never sent in a referral so he didn’t know how the missionaries got his address. But he was very grateful for the things he was learning.

Jerry was baptized on June 19, 2025 as a member of the Dayton Ward. Jerry’s life has improved greatly after baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. He is a changed man and his countenance has changed due to the covenants he has made.

Behold, I will hasten my work in its time. (D&C 88:73)

The Lord is hastening his work across the Tennessee Knoxville Mission! His hand is very evident all across the mission.

In the last six months we have seen this in:

• The creation of the Johnson City Stake from the Cumberland and Kingsport Stakes.
• The creation of the Cleveland Stake from the Chattanooga Stake.
• Our mission complement has increased from 170 missionaries to 190 missionaries.
• Elder Quentin L. Cook announced at the June 2025 Mission Leader Seminar that the 12 month period ending in May 2025 was the highest convert baptisms in the history of the church.
• The Church News announced that the 12 month period ending in June 2025 set a new record.
• June 2025 was the highest baptizing month in the history of the Tennessee Knoxville Mission (in the last 10 years we can see).
• July 2025 was a new record in baptism for a four week month.

As we met for our July 2025 zone conference, it gave us an opportunity to reflect on how the Lord is hastening his work and to focus on areas where we can continue to help more people receive the blessings of baptism and confirmation.

We’ve been working on teaching the doctrine of baptism simply and frequently. We want everyone to know how Heavenly Father wants to bless them through making covenants with Him. To do this, we’ve focused on pages 28-29 of Preach My Gospel. Sister Barlow has role played teaching the doctrine of baptism and confirmation with every missionary in the mission. We are focused on sharing this doctrine every time we meet with friends.

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We’ve studied the importance of increasing our faith and acting in great faith. We want to make sure everything we do connects back to our missionary purpose and we see everything through a lens of faith.

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Central to much of the success we are seeing in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission is focusing on inviting everyone to worship the Savior with us and feel His Spirit. Preach My Gospel teaches us, “One of the most valuable experiences you can help people have is attending a Church service. Invite them and explain what it will be like. Tell them how attending a sacrament meeting will bless their lives.” Elder Quentin L. Cook teaches us:

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We have been working to connect these principles in powerful ways. We have faith that if we can stack these habits and keep stacking days, we will have friends at church and friends who desire to be baptized.

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Faith is a principle of action and power. Acting in faith is what brings power to our efforts. It all begins with being willing to invite EVERYONE to church. To help us do this, missionaries are focused on inviting 100 people to church every day. This requires a lot of faith and effort. To accomplish this, missionaries have to overcome every fear of talking to people. We know that if we do this consistently throughout the week we will have friends at church on Sunday. Our missionaries track these invitations every day, then each night they send a picture into their zone chat of how many people they invited to church that day.

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As soon as we find someone who says yes to coming to church, we immediately work to connect them with members. We ask every day, “What can we do today that will help this friend come to church on Sunday?” Meeting members and feeling a connection to them makes a huge difference. We now call Saturday “Sacrament Saturday”. On Saturday, we schedule time to go out with members to visit all these friends in person and commit them to attend with us on Sunday. The members offer to give them rides, meet them at the door, sit by them, answer their questions, and introduce them to other members. We’ve found that this is also a great time to teach our friends the doctrine of baptism. They’ve just participated in an ordnance for the first time in their life with the sacrament, we are in a dedicated building, and we have members with us. This is a great time to show them the baptismal font, teach them the doctrine of baptism and how Heavenly Father wants to bless them, and invite them to act.

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It has been amazing to see these missionaries act in such great faith. Their courage to invite EVERYONE is inspiring. They are making extraordinary efforts to help friends come to church. The members are making an incredible difference with by helping the people we’re teaching feel they have a friend that will support them as they connect to a new church family.

At our July Zone Conference, we continued to work on these principles, including:

• “Rewind Time” and how we can find great success in following up with friends who have been taught in the past but stopped progressing.
• Creating Lesson Plans before each lesson to be prepared to teach with power.
• “The Power Flow” which is a set of Preach My Gospel principles we teach missionaries to use as they invite friends to church. This gives them a process to practice and role play which builds their confidence to talk with EVERYONE.
• A highlight of the zone conference was Sister Barlow sharing “Three Promised Blessings That Will Change Your Mission”. 1) Focus on your missionary purpose to successfully find, teach, and baptize. 2) “Your success will be multiplied exponentially as you harness the power of members with whom you serve.” – President Nelson 3) Power comes as you daily immerse yourself in the Book of Mormon. Help your friends to do the same.

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Sister Barlow also prepared a powerful video of missionaries sharing their experience and best practices with four areas we’ve been focused on these last few months.

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It is such a privilege to work with these missionaries. Their faith and willingness is remarkable. We are seeing miracles happen across the mission every day. Most importantly, through these efforts and acting in such great faith, they are becoming lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ.

Chattanooga, Cleveland, Cookeville Zones

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Cumberland, Knoxville, Smoky Mountain Zones

Asheville, Johnson City, Kingsport Zones

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The timing of zone conference created the unusual experience of having MLC on Friday right after zone conferences ended. Our monthly MLC meeting is one of our favorite meetings on the month. We sit in the back of the room as these leaders counsel together about what’s working and what we need to change to help more people receive the blessings of baptism and confirmation. This is the group that sets the goals for the mission each month. They come to the meeting with bottoms-up goals from their zone, and then set goals for the mission. For the month of August, they set a goal of achieving 100. baptisms in the mission. This will require great faith and a lot of work, but everyone across the mission is engaged and working incredibly hard. Please join your faith with ours in praying that we can reach this goal..

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Lastly, it’s exciting to see the progress of the Knoxville Tennessee Temple happening right down the street. As a mission, we feel we are helping to prepare a place and a people for this new temple of God.

#WhatsUpInTKM

On Wednesday, April 9, 2025, 7 outstanding missionaries completed their service in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission. We are starting to see missionaries we’ve served with the entire time finish their missions, and it seems like it gets harder and harder to see them leave us to return home. As they have centered their life on Jesus Christ and focused on their missionary purpose, they have changed in powerful ways. We love them, are very proud of them, and know great things lie ahead for each of them.

Before leaving on Wednesday, we celebrated with them on Tuesday. We began with lunch where they shared important lessons they’ve learned from this experience. Most of the discussion focused on how they can apply these lessons as they move forward as lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ, especially the power of reading the Book of Mormon every day, partaking of the sacrament every week, attending the temple regularly, and keeping every covenant they’ve made. We also met with each of them 1:1 and had the opportunity to give them a blessing.

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For the 16th TKM Family Olympics, we had three events: Corn Hole, Kub, and the marquee event…Welcome Posters!

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We had a great time, but in the end, we have one team that wins the gold medals.

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Congratulations to the gold medal winners of the 16th TKM Family Olympics! Sister Harrop and Elder Vallejo!

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These missionaries have so much to look forward and we know they each will do incredible things. Most importantly, they’ve become lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. They’ve come to know Him in a way that really can’t be duplicated through other experiences. They leave changed for the better, and the lessons learned will bless them for the rest of their lives.

#WhatsUpInTKM

Kevin had many experiences with God before ever meeting with missionaries. He grew up going to church with his dad, who taught him to follow the Lord. Like many of us, Kevin would have to learn for himself if these things were true. 

Kevin would continue to have faith and do what was right, but had difficult experiences in church. He felt others in church would say one thing, and do the opposite. Kevin still continued to have faith in the Lord, and later in life, he met his wife, Heidi. 

Heidi is a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After getting married, Heidi’s father would come to know and love Kevin. They would have many conversations about Jesus Christ, church,… and baptism. Although his father-in-law was a kind and faithful man who set a good example, Kevin was weary of church because some of his past experiences.

Over the years, many missionaries would come to visit Kevin and Heidi. Every time missionaries visited, Kevin would get in his truck and leave and let them visit his wife. In his own words Kevin said:

“I ran away from missionaries for about 20 years. I knew I wanted to get back into church, but I just never connected with anyone there before. That was, until God sent me two of the right missionaries at the right time.”

Elder Trey Driggs and Elder Asher Lewis met Kevin and Heidi and on that first visit they simply listened to Kevin’s concerns and experiences. For the first time in a long while, Kevin could feel the love of Christ from a member of a church and invited the missionaries back into his home. After sharing more of their personal stories, Kevin and Heidi had a personal testimony that missionaries were the Lord’s representatives on Earth, and were especially sent by Him to share the gospel. Both of them had a very spiritual experience when Elder Driggs shared his old ID photo, which resembled their son who had passed away. They had a witness that their son had sent the right missionaries at the right time to bring Kevin the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Kevin would make a lot of changes in his life the next few months, but was concerned about losing a missionary after transfers. Elder Kaden Wilson would come into Kevin’s life and they really connected. Kevin realized that he could trust more and more people from church and began to open up even more. 

Kevin was baptized July 19th, 2023 by his father-in-law, the day of his son’s birthday. 

Kevin and his wife Heidi continue to walk in faith and prepare themselves to be sealed in the temple as husband and wife, for time and all eternity. Families can together forever!

The missionaries first met Ian in the parking lot at TJ Maxx where they were handing out cards to invite people to the Tabernacle Choir Watch Party.

Ian described his experience in his own words:

“When I first met the missionaries I was dealing with a lot of darkness and I didn’t know how to get out of it. The missionaries found me when I was leaving a store walking back to my car and they asked me if I would like a picture of Jesus Christ and I said, “Sure!” Then they asked me if I had a church that I attended. Being new to the area and unsure of my faith, I had no church to go to. They offered me to come and tour their church and join them in worshipping Jesus Christ on Sunday.”

“Looking back, I was unsure of what my brain was telling me in that moment. I again said, “Sure.” I didn’t know it at the time, but that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and a moment I will remember forever.”

“I took a chance with the missionaries when at the time I wasn’t sure how I felt about God. I was lost and confused. I went that Saturday to tour their church and from the moment I walked in I could feel the spirit of God there. It was a feeling I had not felt in years since I went through a dark path and had lost my faith in God.”

“As I continued to meet with the missionaries, they taught me how to come closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Everything they invited me to do helped to build my faith. I knew it was the missing piece I needed to step out of the darkness and fulfill my life with Christ once again.”

“Elder Wagon and Elder Gardner had put their trust into me that I would be ready for baptism. Since that first lesson I made sure to read a scripture every night and pray to God, which was something I hadn’t done in years. When I did that, it was the best feeling.”

“As the time of my baptism was approaching, I was having my doubts and was scared I wasn’t ready to receive the Holy Ghost. I reached out to Sister Bosh, Sister Rush and Sister Low and they talked me through everything and reassured me I was ready. As I spoke t them, it felt like I was speaking to God and I could feel Him there telling me I was more than ready.”

“That following Sunday, December 22, 2024, Elder Gardner baptized me and Elder Potter helped me receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Since then I feel like a whole new person. While still not perfect, I’m working every day to become the best version of myself. I love helping others with the missionaries to receive the word and love of Jesus Christ. I never would have thought I’d have come this far so quickly, but I couldn’t have done so without the help and love of Elder Gardner, Elder Potter, Elder Wagnon, Sister Rush, Sister Bosh, Sister Low, Brandon, Elder and Sister Bennett, and the rest of the amazing people I’m proud to call my family at the Asheville Central Branch and the Asheville Ward.”