Saturday, June 6, 2009

District Dissolved In Nigeria

The Akure Nigeria District was recently dissolved. The district had only two branches in the cities of Akure and Ondo. I believe that both of these cities still have branches, but that district was discontinued. The district was originally created in 2003 and was likely dissolved because it only had two branches (which is very small for a district). Akure and Ondo are also about 30 miles away from each other, which is a big distance for Nigeria. We have seen little growth in the Church in this area of Nigeria, which is inland from Lagos, in the past five years. The Church has continued to grow steadily in Lagos where there are now two stakes (organized in 1997 and 2005). The four districts inland from Lagos (located in Abeokuta, Ibadan, Ijebu-Ode, and Ile-Ife) were all organized in the 1990s and hopefully a couple will mature into stakes soon. The Book of Mormon was recently translated in Yoruba, one of the predominant languages spoken in this area, and hopefully this will allow for greater strength and growth in the coming years. Furthermore one of the missions in Lagos will be discontinued this summer, which is likely due to the slower growth in this region of the country. The greatest growth in Nigeria is occurring in Benin City, where we are likely to see new stakes organized, and southeastern Nigeria.

1 comment:

TempleRick said...

The Akure Branch and Ondo Branch are now organized under the Nigeria Lagos East Mission.