Thomas S. Monson's 1968 Prophecy to the Görlitz Saints Behind the Iron Curtain

In November 1968, Elder Thomas S. Monson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited Görlitz, a city in the German Democratic Republic deep behind the Iron Curtain. The handful of Saints who gathered to meet with him did so in a war-damaged building, and their spirits were as battered as their circumstances: Church literature was banned, open missionary work was impossible, there were no stakes, no patriarch, and no hope on the horizon that the blessings other members of the Church enjoyed would ever be theirs. Standing at the pulpit with tear-filled eyes and a voice choked with emotion, Monson made the Saints a promise: "If you will remain true and faithful to the commandments of God, every blessing any member of the Church enjoys in any other country will be yours." Twenty-one years later, recounting the promise in his April 1989 general conference address "Thanks Be to God," he was able to confess the hand of God in its fulfillment. The Freiberg Germany Temple had been dedicated in 1985 — the first and only temple ever built behind the Iron Curtain — and as the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the Church in East Germany received stakes, patriarchs, missionaries, and the ordinances of the temple. Monson returned to Görlitz in 1995, twenty-seven years after the promise, to visit the Saints who had remained true.