Difference between revisions of "Christian D. Fjelsted"

Revision as of 18:36, 29 June 2021

Christian Daniel Fjelsted (sometimes spelled Fjeldsted) served as one of the first seven Presidents of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1884 to 1905.

He was born on February 20, 1829, near Copenhagen, Denmark. His father died when he was ten years old and he took on the role of helping to support his mother. He learned the trade of a moulder.

He married Karen Olsen in 1849 and in 1852 they were baptized members of the Church—some of the first Scandinavian converts. He shared the gospel with his fellow workers, but when his employer found out, Fjelsted was immediately dismissed. Fjelsted and his wife and children immigrated to Utah in 1858.

He served in many leadership capacities in the church. He served as a missionary to Scandinavia from 1867 to 1870, from 1886 to 1888, and from 1901 to 1905. He presided over the Scandinavian Mission from 1888 to 1890. For a year beginning in 1855, he labored as a traveling elder in the Copenhagen conference. He then was called to preside over the Aalborg conference for two years. In 1872, he lived in Logan, Utah, to labor among the Scandinavian Saints in Northern Utah. In 1897 he served a special mission to Chicago where he formed a branch of the Church consisting primarily of Scandinavian members of the Church.

He became ill when he returned home from his last mission to Scandinavia and passed away six months later on December 23, 1905. During his lifetime he had entered into plural marriage by marrying three additional wives (Johanne Maria Christensen, Catrina Marie Christensen, and Josephine Margarethe Larsen). He was the father of fifteen children.