Roughly 2,500 people — a vast majority of whom are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — read a page of the Book of Mormon at the 2024 Frankfurter Buchmesse, or Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct. 16-20.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest trade fair for books in the world, with over 230,000 attendees this year from Germany and beyond. The Church sponsored a booth that invited attendees to participate in what is called the “Book of Mormon Experiment” as well as discover their heritage through FamilySearch, according to a release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org and the Church’s Europe Newsroom.
The Book of Mormon Experiment invited nonmembers to read one page of the Book of Mormon and mark each reference to God or Jesus Christ, with the intent to help participants come to their own knowledge of the truthfulness of the book.
“Each person gets to know for themselves that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, because they’ve read the words, they’ve seen the pages, and then they can share with us what they’ve learned,” said Jeff Sheets, creator of the experiment and a Brigham Young University professor.
That is exactly what took place in Frankfurt, Germany.
“This is one of the most important book fairs in the world,” said Elder Rubén V. Alliaud, General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s Europe Central Area, “and we have — to my belief, my faith and my hope — one of the most important books in the world: the Book of Mormon.”
Participants at the fair were encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings after reading their page, which led to various discussions of faith. Many expressed feelings of peace, curiosity and inspiration as they interacted with the words of the ancient prophets. Copies of the Book of Mormon were handed out in over 20 languages throughout the fair.
In addition to the Book of Mormon Experiment, participants at the Frankfurt Book Fair were given the opportunity to discover their ancestry through FamilySearch.
This is the second year that the Church has brought FamilySearch to the fair, following a successful booth last year.
“People are instantly connected to their families as they start to build their own family tree,” said Torsten Kux, Europe Central Area manager for FamilySearch. “They just enter their name and then the name of their parents, and they see the tree grow and want to go on and on to build their family tree.”
At the fair, over 7,000 visitors expressed interest in tracing their roots and discovering family connections from generations past. The app My Family Tree was downloaded over 1,000 times, and more than 2,500 new ancestor names have been added to people’s family trees.
“It’s not about building trees, it’s not about genealogical things. It is about connecting people. We are a part of one whole family,” said Elder Alliaud.
