Next Monday, 22nd January 2024, marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival in Australia of the first missionaries of the Reorganized Church. Charles Wesley Wandell and Glaud Rodger arrived in Sydney on 22nd January 1874.

On 5 April 1874, with a membership of fourteen, the two seventies organized the Australasian Mission. Later in April that year Rodger left Sydney and travelled to the Newcastle area where he contacted Latter Day Saint immigrants from the British Isles and was successful in establishing the Hunter River Branch.

Advancing age and ill health resulted in Wandell’s death in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney in 1875. Rodger remained in Australia for four more years and continued his missionary work alone. By 1877 he had established 6 Branches with a total membership of 96. And, because he stayed, the work of the Church was begun in many places that might have been without the restored gospel for many years to come.