We are a community of Christians who believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. We strive every day to live as he lived — to love and serve others as he did.
The Jamaica 1st Ward — then called the Jamaica 1st Branch — was organized as a local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for southeast Queens on 5 December 1993.
Like other residents of Queens, the “World’s Borough,” members of the Jamaica 1st Ward come from all over the globe. In fact, the majority of its members were born outside the United States. These men and women hail from at least 24 different countries, including Bangladesh, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.
Subsequently, the Jamaica 1st Ward’s members speak a variety of languages and dialects. Though the congregation’s primary language is English, upwards of a third of its members speak French and/or Haitian Creole.
Members of the Jamaica 1st Ward believe deeply in a teaching found in the Book of Mormon, which is accepted by Latter-day Saints as a book of scripture alongside the Holy Bible: “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17). As a result, members provide extensive, ongoing, and meaningful service to each other and to the community. Members are given assignments, or “callings,” to serve in various capacities in church. All members, from the bishop to Sunday School teachers and others, serve on a voluntary basis without pay, despite numerous hours spent each week in the service of their “fellow beings.”
In addition to their service in the church, members also provide extensive service to the community. In recent years, the Jamaica 1st Ward and its members have organized or participated in efforts to clean and beautiful blocks in central Jamaica; support food pantries; and promote awareness of the COVID-19 vaccine and overcome vaccine hesitancy. In 2022, Jamaica 1st Ward members, in conjunction with the Queens General Assembly and the office of Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, arranged for an in-kind donation totaling $50,000 to five food pantries across Queens, which was delivered throughout 2023.
All these efforts are supported by the generous financial contributions of Latter-day Saints in the Jamaica 1st Ward and throughout the world — money given in addition to the time spent in service. These financial contributions not only support the work of the church but also provide for those in need with food, rent, and other life-sustaining assistance.
Like all Latter-day Saint congregations around the world, the Jamaica 1st Ward is defined by geographic boundaries. The congregation covers roughly the area from the Van Wyck Expressway in the west to the Queens–Nassau County line in the east, and from Grand Central Parkway on the north to John F. Kennedy International Airport on the south. This includes the neighborhoods of Jamaica, Briarwood, Cambria Heights, Hollis, Laurelton, Queens Village, Rochdale, Rosedale, South Jamaica, Springfield Gardens, and St. Albans, among others.
Members first met in rented space on the second level of the Jamaica Market. The congregation moved to its current home, at 89-58 163rd Street in the heart of Jamaica, in 2012.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in western New York State on 6 April 1830, and the church has had a virtually continuous presence in the state over the past nearly 200 years. Joseph Smith and other early church leaders traveled to New York City on numerous occasions, even after the main body of the church began to move toward the western United States. The first group of converts from Liverpool, England, arrived on a ship in New York Harbor in July 1840. The church’s first temple in New York City, the Manhattan New York Temple, was dedicated on 13 June 2004. Today the church has 85,000 members in 144 congregations across New York State.1
