NEWS STORY: `It’s a great day’ for families of freed Mormon missionaries

c. 1998 Religion News Service LEBANON, Ore. _ When the phone rang about 2:45 a.m. Sunday (March 22), Lee Propst groped for the receiver. It was the first good news he’d heard in three days: A Mormon Church official said his son, Andy, and another church missionary had been released unharmed near the Russian town […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

LEBANON, Ore. _ When the phone rang about 2:45 a.m. Sunday (March 22), Lee Propst groped for the receiver.

It was the first good news he’d heard in three days: A Mormon Church official said his son, Andy, and another church missionary had been released unharmed near the Russian town where they had been kidnapped.


“I shouted, `Great!,”’ Lee Propst recalled. “And pretty soon everyone was screaming, `They’re free, they’re free.”’

“The roof came right off the house,” added Mary Propst, Andy’s mother.

Around 11 a.m., the phone rang again at the Propst home in Lebanon, about 80 miles south of Portland.

There was only silence, however, and the Propst family waited and waited for a connection that never came. They hung up after 10 minutes.

Moments later, the phone rang yet again. This time, it was Andy. The wait was over.

“It’s a great day,” the Propst family said, as neighbors, church members and media descended upon them.

In church, Sunday the congregation greeted the family with prayers and smiles.

“Andy is doing fine,” Lee Propst, bishop of Lebanon’s Second Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told the gathering of more than 200 at Sunday services. “And he wanted me to tell you that he absolutely wouldn’t be alive today without your fasting, your prayers, your faith and your support.

“Our whole family would like to thank you as Andy did,” Propst added, “for everything.”


Propst and Travis Robert Tuttle, both 20, of Gilbert, Ariz., were kidnapped Wednesday night (March 18) in the town of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow. On Sunday, after the kidnappers left them in the countryside, they walked back to Saratov and contacted their local mission leader.

Monday (March 23), Russian authorities announced the arrest of two Saratov residents as suspects in the case. Both suspects confessed to taking part in the kidnapping, according to a spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service. No motive for the kidnapping was reported.

Propst and Tuttle are among 600 to 800 Mormon missionaries operating in Russia. The church, which encourages its members to serve as volunteer missionaries for up to two years, has about 58,000 missionaries serving worldwide.

In Saratov, the kidnappers had demanded a $300,000 ransom.

However Richard Hoagland, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, said “we have absolutely no evidence that any ransom was paid.”

He also said both missionaries were in good condition with only minor injuries.

Lee Propst said the missionaries each had “a bump on the head” from being struck at the outset of the kidnapping, and Propst had an injured finger from trying to ward off the blows. They also had sore hands from being handcuffed, he said.

John Easton, a spokesman for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Smith the kidnappers probably gave up because “the noose was tightening.”


“They were feeling the heat, and these guys were amateurs,” Easton said.

Tuttle’s father, Roy, said his son called around 9 a.m. and said he was “in good hands, that he was in good health, that he was so very grateful to be alive.

“I don’t think he comprehended the magnitude of the situation,” Roy Tuttle said.

As for what the younger Tuttle would do next, his father said, “I think he’s been called by God to serve. … But the decision lies with Travis and we haven’t had an hour to talk.”

The Propsts said they expected Their son would want to finish the remaining year of his mission in Saratov. It is, they said, a mark of his religious commitment and his faith.

“If he’s allowed to stay there by the church,” Lee Propst said, “he will. That’s just the way he is.”

DEA END RUBENSTEIN

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