executive director of the faith's Missionary Department, Elder David F. Evans of the LDS Church's First Quorum of the Seventy, in a video the church released in September 2013, citing World Health Organization statistics.

A statement that accompanied the video said, "The church does everything it can to ensure the safety of its missionaries, including providing training in personal safety and good health practices, repeated instruction for missionaries on auto and bicycle safety and ongoing consultation with local church leaders about the safety of specific areas and neighborhoods."

The Barnard family said they draw "comfort … from our belief that Natalie is with our Heavenly Father and that she continues the Lord’s work with the same vigor with which she entered the mission field."

They added: "Natalie was driven by aA single strand of hair provided compelling evidence that an Australian convert to Islam was a member of the terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and that he was involved in hostage-taking in Yemen two years ago.

As the ABC's 7.30 program revealed in June last year, the AFP suspected Christopher Havard of helping to guard three European hostages after they had been kidnapped at gunpoint in the capital, Sana'a, in December 2012.

Havard was killed in November 2013 by a missile fired from an American Predator drone as he drove with four other members of AQAP through the desert of eastern Yemen.

The three hostages were Austrian citizen Dominik Neubauer and Finnish couple Atte and Leila Kaleva.

The Kalevas have given very few interviews since they were freed