Shortly after their marriage, Elbert and Edna Thomas were sent by the LDS Church to Japan as full-time missionaries.

[8] After completing the Japanese mission, she and her husband traveled through Korea, China, southern Asia, northern Africa and into Europe before returning to Salt Lake City in 1913.

[9] She served in this capacity until 1933, when she was released as a counselor and as a member of the Primary Association's general board to allow her to move to Washington, D.C., with her husband, who had defeated Reed Smoot in the 1932 election to be the United States Senator for Utah.

Thomas kept a diary of their trip in which she wrote, "We are doing just what President Roosevelt asked us to do, meet and talk with the educated people.

[2] Edna Thomas died of a heart attack on April 29, 1942, in Washington, D.C.[1] She was the mother of three daughters, the eldest of whom was born in Japan.