George Washington Bean was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1841 at the age of 10. Four years after that, at the age of 14, he was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Seventy for the Church, a position usually bestowed upon men much older than Bean. This position involved an increase of responsibility that included Church assignments such as evangelizing. His calling as a Seventy alongside his ability to speak different Native American dialects led to him being one of the 32 missionaries called to settle the Las Vegas Mission in 1855.
