When Elder Wan-Liang Wu was 10 years old, his family moved from their home in Taiwan to Bolivia, with the goal to live in Argentina, as they looked for better opportunities.
Young Wan-Liang wondered why they were moving — going away from their extended family and friends and schooling.
An aunt on his mother’s side of the family brought up the idea to them “to go to South America to find a new world,” Elder Wu said. “That’s the way they talked about it. ‘Let’s go find a new world in South America.’”
It was in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where his sisters met the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through friends. He also began meeting with the missionaries and was baptized at age 11.
Life was still challenging — they had left their extended family in Taiwan, and as he was learning Spanish, he was teased at school for his pronunciations — and while the events of his life hadn’t changed, the gospel gave him a different perspective.
“I lost something to have better things in a better way of the Lord,” said Elder Wu, who was sustained as a General Authority Seventy in the April 2025 general conference.
As he learned about the Book of Mormon, he was impressed with the experiences of Lehi’s family going to the wilderness, where they eventually made it to a promised land.
With the perspective of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Elder Wu said he is “grateful for my mom and my dad for their sacrifice.” It was there in South America they were able “to receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Moving from Taiwan to South America
Elder Wu’s family, including his parents, three older sisters and older brother, moved to Bolivia in three different groups. His father had moved first and a couple of years later was followed by his mother, 17-year-old sister and 13-year-old brother. Young Wan-Liang was in the last group with his oldest sister, who was 18, and the youngest sister, who was 15. Due to a visa issue that came up at the airport, he stayed with an aunt in Taiwan for three months before joining his family more than 11,800 miles (about 19,000 km) away in Bolivia.
When he arrived, his sisters, who had already been meeting with the missionaries, invited him to go to Church meetings with them, and he also started meeting with the missionaries.
“They tried explaining using dictionaries,” he said of the missionaries teaching concepts such as faith. “I still remember there were two or three dictionaries in each lesson.” They used Spanish-English, English-Chinese and Chinese-Spanish dictionaries.
While he didn’t understand everything they were teaching, he felt the Spirit confirm truth. Before the meeting when the missionaries invited him to be baptized, he told his sisters, “I’ve already decided I’ll be baptized because I know it’s true.”
His oldest two sisters were baptized first, and several months later Elder Wu and the youngest sister were also baptized. His brother was baptized about 15 years later.
“In that new life, we found hope, a new horizon, a new perspective focusing on Jesus Christ and His gospel,” he said. They felt like they found a new family “because we had lost everything.”
“I found my new identity as a son of God, and I’m His disciple,” he said.
His parents had lived through World War II. Elder Wu said his father would ask why God would allow wars, disasters and suffering.
As his parents were building their businesses that ranged from an arcade to a supermarket, they would work long hours, Elder Wu said of his parents’ work in first Bolivia and then Argentina.
Four years later, in 1985, the family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Life in Argentina
The first Sunday they went to Church in Buenos Aires, there were two young men greeting people at the doors. They asked him his name and invited Elder Wu, then 14, to seminary.
A few months later, he met Marcela Beatriz Castellani in a seminary class.
“We were with a big group of friends,” Sister Marcela Wu said. As the Church in the area grew, their stake was divided, and they were in different stakes.
He attended a technical school that had an additional year for practical experience. He studied communications systems, which included setting up telephone systems. With the extra years in school for when they moved and the technical school, he graduated in 1991, at 21 years old.
Before going on a mission, he and Marcela reconnected at a young single adult activity. Both were planning on serving missions, and they went out a few times before leaving.
“We decided that we were going to write to each other and that we would focus on our missions,” said Sister Wu, who served in the Argentina Salta Mission. “Because we were both serving missions, we had a lot of things in common to share.”
“In that new life, we found hope, a new horizon, a new perspective focusing on Jesus Christ and His gospel.”
— Elder Wan-Liang Wu, General Authority Seventy
Elder Wu was surprised by the assignment to serve in Hong Kong, Cantonese speaking. He spent his childhood in Taiwan speaking Mandarin Chinese. He went to the Provo Missionary Training Center, in Provo, Utah, where he studied both English and Cantonese and would rotate between Spanish and Mandarin interpreters.
Elder Wu and his companions put their efforts into finding those who would accept the gospel “and to love them and teach them,” Elder Wu said, adding that effort and sacrifice strengthened their own testimonies.
From misunderstanding to faithful members
Sister Wu’s parents were newlyweds when two American missionaries knocked on their door. Her mother joined the Church first, and her father joined six months later, she said.
A few years later, there was a misunderstanding with the local leaders, and her parents stopped attending. Her family moved to the La Boca Branch when she was a child. The members there reached out to invite her older brother, who was 17, to attend activities, and he would bring his 8-year-old sister. The missionaries began teaching her, and she was baptized, despite her fear of water, she said.
When her brother married a Latter-day Saint a few years later, the sister-in-law asked her in-laws why they didn’t go to Church, because then they could be sealed together as a family, Sister Wu recalled.
“The next Sunday, my parents were the first ones at Church,” she said. “After that, they were faithful members.”
Her family was sealed in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple when she was 17 — the year after it was dedicated. Later, her parents served as temple workers, and her father served as a sealer.
Prior to Elder and Sister Wu serving as mission leaders in Chile in 2022, her father received permission to seal Elder Wu’s family. Sister Wu was proxy for Elder Wu’s mother, and a brother-in-law was proxy for his father. It was a very spiritual experience for all of them, Elder Wu said.
“Families can be sealed together for eternity,” he said.
A promise to serve the Lord
After getting home, the two returned missionaries began dating. Elder Wu was looking for work, so many of their dates were either free or inexpensive. “We would go for a walk in the park and talk,” she said. He added they sometimes would go get ice cream or candy.
Nine months after he returned from serving a mission, he proposed. They got married on March 17, 1995, first civilly and, later in the day, sealed in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple.
He had been accepted to BYU–Hawaii and had a scholarship, but they wanted to go together. “As I was on a waitlist, we started working at my father’s supermarket,” said Sister Wu, adding that her father was looking to sell the business. The store was one that her great-grandparents had started in the same location.
When they didn’t go to BYU–Hawaii, they continued working at the supermarket and worked there for 12 years while they started their family. They had three children, a daughter and two sons.
In December 2001, due to political tensions in Buenos Aires, there were protests, and their store was broken into and incurred a lot of damage. That’s when they decided to fix up the store and eventually sell it.
As they were preparing to sell the store, a man came by who was interested in buying it — noting the success of the store, even though they were closed on Sundays and didn’t sell coffee or alcohol, Sister Wu said.
“Before we got married, we made a promise to each other that we would serve the Lord,” Sister Wu said. “We enjoyed doing it.”
Elder Wu said they worked to involve their children as they served. Sister Wu added they’ve always worked to support each other, too, whether helping with homework, going to recitals or serving in the Church.
Elder Wu served in the ward as elders quorum president and later as bishop, and Sister Wu served in various Primary callings and was a Gospel Principles teacher. He served as a counselor in the stake presidency for seven years each for two stake presidents, and then as stake president for eight years.
At the time of his call as a General Authority Seventy, they were serving as mission leaders in the Chile Antofagasta Mission.
Elder Wu said that it’s been wonderful to see “the Lord’s hand in each missionary’s life changing them from a youth to a true disciple of Jesus Christ.”
About Elder Wan-Liang Wu
Family: Wan-Liang Wu was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on Dec. 22, 1970, the youngest child of Chang Yung Wu and Bao Guey Li; he has three sisters and a brother. He married Marcela Beatriz Castellani on March 17, 1995, in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple. They are the parents of three children.
Education: Earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa in 2014 and a Master of Business Administration from the Universidad del CEMA in Buenos Aires in 2020.
Employment: Owned and managed family grocery store in Buenos Aires; has worked for the Church since 2007, first in the Meetinghouse Facilities Department and then, in 2016, as the operations and maintenance manager for the South America South Area.
Church service: Was serving as the Chile Antofagasta Mission president at the time of his call; is a former stake president, stake presidency counselor, bishop, elders quorum president, ward clerk, elders quorum presidency counselor, temple ordinance worker and full-time missionary in the China Hong Kong Mission.
