The following is excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.

Pati Gomez was raised in Tenango, a remote village in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Bordering Guatemala, the mountainous highlands and dense rainforest of Chiapas are dotted with Mayan archaeological sites and Spanish colonial towns where 560,000 people speak Tseltal, a Mayan language all but lost to humanity.

Chiapas is the poorest state in all of Mexico. Seventy percent of the indigenous people there fall below the government subsistence level equivalent to $38 per month. Many students don’t go to high school because they must work to support their families by subsistence farming.

Pati wanted to get educated so she could live a better life. After high school, she moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas, worked hard, and learned Spanish. She also was attracted to a church, wondering what it was like inside. Her curiosity led her to missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon. She was baptized.

A year later, Pati served a mission to Mexico City, then returned home to teach her family and neighbors in their native language of Tseltal. No Book of Mormon is available in Tseltal, and most people who speak the language can’t read anyway. Still, many were baptized, and Pati’s home became their meetinghouse. Membership has continued to grow, and a chapel is now being constructed in Tenango.

The situation of the Tseltal-speaking Saints in Pati’s village sheds light on an enormous problem facing the Church: Of the 7,139 languages spoken in the world, half have little or no written counterpart, making it impossible to print the Book of Mormon in those languages. And even among those who do know a language that can be written, three-quarters of a billion adults worldwide can’t read, according to Unesco.

It seems Lehi’s promise to his son Joseph that his seed “shall hearken unto the words of the book” (2 Nephi 3:22–23)is an impossible dream.

But not to the Lord.

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.