Of the 144 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temples around the world, two are in Missouri: one in St. Louis that was dedicated in 1997 and the other, above, in Liberty, dedicated in 2012. Ryan Schuessler

Columbia, Mo. — Carl Glasemeyer was 3 years old when his family packed up their lives in South Texas and headed for Missouri.

“[My father] actually had a dream that he felt God was telling him to move [to Missouri],” said Glasemeyer, whose family were members of the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Although we didn’t end up in Independence specifically, where the church is headquartered, we moved really close. We just uprooted everything and had to find jobs and a different school.”

Although he has since left the church for personal reasons, his family was part if a wave of members from the Latter-day Saints movement who have relocated to Missouri despite a history of persecution in the state. The Mormon community in Missouri has grown by tens of thousands in recent years, according to church statistics and the U.S. Religion Census. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alone has grown by more than 200 percent — more than 40,000 people — since 1990, raising it from the 21st to the 17th largest Mormon population in the United States.

Mormonism is one of the fastest-growing religions in the U.S., according to USA Today, adding 2 million members and nearly 300 new congregations over the past decade. For the several churches that now fall under the umbrella of the Mormon tradition, what looks like normal growth in Missouri is also a rebirth in a historical homeland.

The Mormon story in the U.S. is one of expulsion and migration. The church was established in New York in the early 19th century by Joseph Smith Jr., who is held as a prophet. Smith later moved the church to Ohio, then Missouri. It didn’t take long for the Mormon community to grow, creating tension with other Missourians.

“That’s when you started getting a lot of anti-Mormon groups,” said Pete Grigsby, a representative for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in western Missouri. “They didn’t like Mormons and what they stood for,” like land claims and the abolition of slavery.

“There began to be large numbers of people who decided that it was time for these [Mormons] to move on,” added Thomas Spencer, an academic and the author of “The Missouri Mormon Experience.”

That was around the time Jeremiah Morgan’s great-great-great-grandparents joined the movement in Missouri. Morgan, of Kansas City by way of Iowa, moved to Missouri as a child in the early 1980s, nearly two centuries after his ancestors were expelled from the state.

“I knew it was an important place for our family,” he said. “And my mother felt it was an important place.”