The Mormon Hymn Written in a Mexican Jail
In 1910, Andrés Carlos González Rodríguez became the first Mexican Latter-day Saint to serve a full-time mission.
A Mormon missionary was thrown in jail for singing a hymn. In 1910, Andres Carlos Gonzalez Rodriguez left his wife and their 3-month-old baby to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He traveled more than a thousand miles to Mexico City, a journey that took 24 days, becoming the first Mexican Latter-day Saint to serve a full-time mission. And this was not an easy time to be a missionary in Mexico.
The Mexican Revolution had begun. Andreas and his companion Jesse Porter would sometimes stand on street corners and sing hymns to attract people to hear their message. One day they sang a familiar Christian hymn called In the Sweet by and by. But some local Protestants objected to the Latter-day Saint missionaries using the hymn and told them not to sing it again. The missionaries returned anyway.
And when they sang it again, the police were called. Andreas and his companion were thrown in jail. During this turbulent time in Mexico, Andreas had no idea what might happen to him. He had a wife and tiny baby waiting at home. So, as he sat in that jail cell, Andre began to write. If they didn't want him singing someone else's words, he would write his own. Using that same familiar melody, Andre wrote completely new Spanish lyrics about missionary work and the joy of serving Jesus Christ, he called the hymn despida, which means farewell.
And that's what makes the words he wrote so remarkable. Sitting in jail unsure whether he would ever see his family again. Andreas didn't write about fear or anger. He wrote about joy. Joy in serving the Lord and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Andreas was released, but his hymn lived on. In 1912, it was published in the church's Spanish himnil and eventually became known by its opening words.
For generations, it became a beloved hymn among Spanish-speaking Latter-day Saints. And more than a century later, the hymn written by a young Mexican missionary in a jail cell was selected for the church's new worldwide hymn collection. In English, it's called, "Oh, how great is our joy." Andreas couldn't have known how far his words would travel. He couldn't control the people who opposed him or what would happen next.
But he could choose how he responded, and he turned a frightening moment into a testimony of the joy he found in serving Jesus Christ. More than a hundred years later, the world is still singing it.
