[Excerpted from Millions.]
I knew this was going to come out of Utah as soon as I heard the announcement that Jon Huntsman was going to China. I emailed Howie about it.
This, from the blog of a Utah State Rep. Craig Frank, may not be quite what Huntsman and Obama were thinking:
This is a big deal for the Governor, Utah, the United States, and…the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).
Although the LDS church’s missionary program has an ecclesiastical presence throughout many parts of the world, the countries with the largest population bases (China and India) are not currently open to the church’s missionary efforts. Huntsman served his LDS mission as a 19 year old young man in the Taiwan Taipei Mission in the early 1980’s. He has since been back to the Far East on a number of occasions. Huntsman not only takes to China his political acumen but also a lifetime of membership in the LDS church. This should bode well for the LDS church’s mission to spread the gospel throughout the world, since all members of the LDS faith are under divine mandate to…”Go ye therefore, and teach all nations…” (Matt 28:19)
Huntsman’s ambassadorship not only puts him in an excellent position to address US-China relations, it puts him in an even better position to teach the gospel…in Mandarin.
The blog has since been scrubbed, GOP 12 reports, but it lives on on Google.
Is it country first or the LDS for Jon? Maybe Huntsman will receive a special eternal gift if he converts at least fifty people while being in China per year. You never know.
