PROVO, Utah — In 1898, Inez Knight and Jennie Brimhall went to England and became the first full-time single sister missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this dispensation.
Now a new mural depicting their service covers a wall at the Provo Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, where sister missionaries who are making history today walk by and receive inspiration from Knight and Brimhall’s examples.
Printed on the wall across from the mural are the words, “Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work” (Doctrine and Covenants 4:3) and the question, “How am I showing my desire to serve God today?”
The mural was installed June 2 and was designed and created by the Church using models and photography of buildings, boats, streets and water in Liverpool, England, to create a scene of the two missionaries when they first arrived.
Thinking of the first single sister missionaries is inspiring to Sister Kate Henderson, from North Carolina, as she trains at the MTC and is surrounded by many other young sister missionaries at the same time. Right now, there is a wave of 18-year-old sisters beginning their service, following the Church’s lowering the missionary age to 18 for young women last November.
“It’s really inspiring to be part of this group of amazing women, and their whole goal is just to do the same thing,” Sister Henderson said. “And so looking at that painting, it was the same then, it’s the same now. It’s just women choosing to love God and to make sacrifices and to further the work.”
Sister Halli Haddock, from Highland, Utah, who is also training right now, added, “For us, we have the opportunity to choose for ourselves to go, and just the fact that they even chose to go somewhere so far away is inspiring to see.”
Church President Dallin H. Oaks said missionaries serving today are serving “at a historic time.” At the 2026 Seminar for New Mission Leaders in June, he noted the more than 87,000 full-time missionaries currently serving and the incoming wave of 18-year-old sisters beginning their service. On Tuesday, July 14, the Church announced that the missionary force has reached approximately 88,500 full-time missionaries, an all-time high.
Women began serving in the mission field starting in the 1850s, explains a Church History topic page on the growth of missionary work, but they were married women who served with their missionary husbands mainly in domestic and educational endeavors. In 1898 the First Presidency approved some mission presidents’ requests for women to teach, and soon women received formal mission calls, were set apart and preached in public. In Europe especially, sister missionaries helped change public attitudes toward the Church.
Knight and Brimhall sailed into Liverpool, England, on April 22, 1898. Knight wrote in her journal about the first meeting with the mission president and other missionaries: “Each speaker welcomed the lady missionaries. Brother McMurrin said in his remarks he wanted each of us to understand that we had been called here by the Lord, then for the first time I began to sense the responsibility resting upon me.”
The new sister missionaries began teaching first in Oldham, then in Cheltenham.
“Saints,” Vol. 3 reads: “They went door to door and frequently testified at street meetings. They also accepted invitations to meet with people in their homes. Listeners usually treated them well, although occasionally someone would mock them or accuse them of lying.
“Inez and Jennie hoped to see more women serving missions. ‘We feel that the Lord is blessing us in our attempts to allay prejudice and spread the truth,’ they reported to mission leaders. ‘We trust that many of the worthy young women in Zion will be permitted to enjoy the same privilege we now have, for we feel that they can do much good.’”
Missionary journals of their second companions, Eliza Chipman and Josephine Booth, were published by the Church in March 2024. Both were in their early 20s at the time, and their journals provide a detailed and unique view of Latter-day Saint missionary work at the turn of the 20th century.
As the journals were released, Church historians said while missionary work was different in those days, modern missionaries will relate to many aspects of their experience — especially the joy of helping others draw closer to God and join the covenant path.
