The New Face of Global Mormonism

"I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit," the elder said, as the seated congregation watched the 6-foot-1 computer salesman in a white gown being submerged, their eyes on a ceiling mirror hung above the pool-size baptismal font.

Omowaiye is one of more than 220,000 people a year baptized abroad into the Mormon Church -- four times the 54,000 annual baptisms in the United States. And like many people around the world, he first started learning about the church on the Internet.

The Mormons have embraced the Internet, and a new TV ad campaign in the United States directs people to find out more about the faith online. Millions of people first learn of the religion through its vast online depository of genealogical records.

The Salt Lake City headquarters has considerable oversight over the global church and transmits general conferences and leadership training sessions via satellite to churches around the world. About one-third of the church's 53,000 missionaries are not from the United States.

After reading about the church online, Omowaiye clicked his way to a dating Web site for Mormons (though not officially affiliated with the church). There he began chatting electronically with Deborah Hess, a relocation manager from Colorado. After corresponding for a year by e-mail, webcam and phone, Hess recently came to Lagos and married Omowaiye, a quiet, soft-spoken man.

"No matter where you go in the world, the service is the same," Hess said, noting that the buildings, baptismal fonts, services and hymns in Lagos were nearly identical to those back home in the United States.

Ngozi Ndukwe, the wife of the recent convert who says the church helped him stop drinking and womanizing, likes this uniformity. She has watched meetings in Salt Lake City on satellite TV here and saw that the teachings in Nigeria are the same as in the United States -- including the emphasis on ancestors.

A central Mormon belief is that even those who have died deserve the chance of salvation through baptism. In temples -- only Mormons "in good standing" can enter -- baptisms by proxy are performed with a living person standing in for one who has died, with names and dates of birth and death discovered in genealogical research.

"My daddy didn't attend any church before he died," said Zion Ndukwe, who makes curtains and blinds for a living.

Ndukwe said he and his wife, a schoolteacher, are planning the 11-hour bus ride to Aba, in southeastern Nigeria, where there is a stunning new Mormon temple. There, he said, he will wade into a pool, surrounded by his Mormon family, and be baptized on behalf of his father. He believes the church teaching that his whole family can be together in heaven one day. "It gives me hope," he said.